Pietà

The Pietà (Italian pronunciation: [pjeˈta]; meaning "pity", "compassion") is a subject in Christian art depicting the Blessed Virgin Mary cradling the mortal body of Jesus Christ after his Descent from the Cross.

However, in practice works called a Pietà may include angels, the other figures usual in Lamentations, and even donor portraits.

Although the subject was known in Italy, the name may have been slower to be adopted, and the Florentine diarist Luca Landucci, after describing a painting in an entry for June 1482, added "which is called by some a Pietà".

A generation later, the Spanish painter Luis de Morales painted a number of highly emotional Pietàs, with examples in the Louvre and Museo del Prado.

[14][15] Lana Del Rey's 2012 music video Born to Die features the scene of a man holding the corpse of the singer in a Piéta-like pose.

St. Vincent (musician)'s song Pietà references her father holding her in a Holiday Inn pool for her baptism "like an inverse-Piéta".

The ending to John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is often interpreted to symbolize a pietà, with Rose of Sharon cradling a dying old man.